Some songwriters
sit down to write today's version of what they do. Others apparently pick
up their guitar and consider "Where do we go from here?"

Louise
Taylor is not inclined to jump through anyone's hoops, and is not disposed
to repeating herself. She is an unbridled creative spirit, with a soulful
and transcendent voice, and a rare feel for the guitar. Her sensual rhythm
on her earlier records and her fingerstyle approach on her later ones
embody a real connection to her axe. I've known people with fantastic
chops who still didn't seem inside their instrument. But Louise Taylor
really owns that thing, she rides it like a horse, she's driving it. (And
what amazing guitars she has! Louise is the de facto poster girl for the
incredible Vermont outfit called Froggy Bottom Guitars.) And her voice,
it's coming out of the person, the whole person, not just the throat or
the lungs. You can hear all she's been and all she's seen.

Velvet
Town is her fifth record, her fourth for the highly regarded Signature
Sounds label. We covered her last release, Written In Red, in which
she ingeniously wove her lyrical folk pop roots with strands of Celtic
music and the Blues. (see our review)

In Velvet
Town, the artist takes a bigger step yet. Her new batch of songs take
on a much jazzier and World Music personality. Her drummer percussionist
Dean Sharp was influential here, as Louise details in our conversation.
Along with helping her to appreciate the scope of her own music through
exposing her to new and far flung inspirations, Dean played brilliantly
and preproduced the project, and mixed the tracks with Paul Antonell.
Close friend and coproducer Annie Gallup was the third side of the triangle.
She was the experienced and perfectionist confidante that Louise required
to make the leap and land where she planned.

We think
that Velvet Town is a great record, and an important one. I hope
exposure to it incites programmers and DJ's to widen their playlists and
acoustic artists to dig a little deeper for their music as well as their
lyrics. continue to interview